


Inscription

by Aja



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dealing with Sirius's death, Fanart, M/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-01
Updated: 2003-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9652208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: Post-OotP. Harry/tabula rasa.  Spoilers for Book 5. (Please note the *actual* date stamp; this fic was written in 2003.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Orphne, Erica, and Pirate Franzi, for betaing, and to Erin and Clio for additional comments. This fic is dedicated to Rave. I had wanted to do a fic based on the cover artwork for ages. Then, wonderful and talented lady she is, she drew at my request the artwork linked below [I'm sad to say I don't think I have an accessible copy of this image anymore; Rave, do you??]--and together the two pieces became the inspiration for this fic.

"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities."

 

When Harry Potter departs from the Hogwarts Express, he leaves Draco Malfoy an uneven lump atop a luggage rack. At night, staving off anger and tears in his bedroom on Privet Drive, he thinks about that—about the look on Malfoy’s face—about the odd bulbous shape of his usually scrawny figure as Harry had grappled and pushed him out of the way.

Sometimes Harry thinks about all the ways he’d like to hurt Draco, and about all the violent things he’d like to do to him. This is satisfying in a much more lasting way than thinking about things he’s done in the past; and when Harry realises that half the things he wants to do aren’t even violent anyway, he still keeps thinking about them.

He accepts the realization that Draco Malfoy is hot well before he understands that this means he finds boys hot. Boys in general do not make his stomach twist in anger, and most boys don’t drop what they are holding in their hands just from hearing his name. Boys in general don’t tell him they’ll have him in ways that make Harry want to slam their heads onto the stone floor. But Malfoy is sleek and menacing, and he is a part of all the other things most boys aren’t, like cruelty and evil and death prophecies.

There is nothing sensual about his need to have Malfoy with his back up against a wall, hands scrabbling against his body—or so Harry thinks. The next time they meet, in Diagon Alley before the start of sixth year, Harry is incensed when Malfoy doesn’t come up to him right away. Instead Draco watches him, one hand in his pocket, eyes glittering, and it takes a moment of the two of them staring at one another without words for Harry to realise that he is, in fact, the only one glaring at all. Malfoy’s stance is curiously laidback—the ever-present smirk is still intact, but the rest of him is different, more open—the living embodiment of a question mark.

Harry desperately wants to go up to him then and tell him, “I’ll have you,” but Ginny and Hermione pull him away so that all he is left with is the memory of Draco Malfoy’s glinting malevolence.

Harry Potter loathes his own obsession with Voldemort, but he cannot stop reading the Prophet or the Quibbler for news of him. More and more these days, however, he finds himself combing the dailies an additional time hunting mention of the Malfoys. He even probes the society columns, unsure what he is looking for, but half-hoping for something that explains why he can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to run his hands over all of that pale skin.

When he can’t find anything, he makes them up. ‘Mr. Draco Malfoy has grown several inches over the summer, and is looking far less sallow than usual due to a profitable stay on the Riviera while his father languished away in prison.’ By the end of summer, he is a master. ‘While Harry Potter celebrated his birthday in the privacy of his Surrey home, Draco Malfoy remained tucked away in the solitude of his Wiltshire estate. The couple was not available for comment at press time, but Mr. Malfoy is rumoured to be having his cake and eating it too where the birthday boy is concerned.’

The night he turns sixteen, Harry Potter gives himself the present of coming over Draco Malfoy. It lasts only as long as it takes him to imagine Malfoy’s hips locking in place against his own, and then he is bucking and staining his trousers.

Harry Potter has no intention of following through on any of these futile imaginings; they are at most his private possessions; he has tucked them away in the recesses of his heart, along with the hatred he feels for Voldemort, the revulsion and pity he feels when he thinks of Cho Chang, and the gaping hole where Sirius used to be.

It is not until he is back on the Hogwarts Express listening to Malfoy spout the same old exhausting drivel, hearing himself spout the same mundane retorts, that he suddenly wants it all to end, once and for all, wants to shut Draco up and trade the insults for other things. It takes all the willpower at his disposal not to grab Malfoy and pull him into his space and trickle a long and exotic description of just what those things could be in his ear until Malfoy shudders and melts and gives in, as Harry knows he must.

By the time he is back at Gryffindor Tower, Harry has decided that no one on earth has the right to give a fuck who he shags one way or the other; so why the fuck shouldn’t it be Malfoy? He isn’t really thinking about what Malfoy himself would say to that—he is Harry Fucking Potter, after all, and short of being able to raise the dead, he can’t kid himself that he doesn’t generally get whatever he wants.

Ron Weasley doesn’t raise an eyebrow when he starts staring openly at Malfoy, but then he and Ron talk less than ever these days, and Harry avoids him and follows Malfoy’s slow, even movements with his eyes. Malfoy used to saunter around like someone’s cocky pointer with a duck in his mouth, but now he glides. In addition to those several extra inches, he has grown far more composed. He never gets flustered over Harry, and he contains his glee when Harry screws up in Potions.

Harry doesn’t miss these things about Draco, because he doesn’t miss anything about Draco—not the way he aches for Sirius’ wolfish grin. And how can one miss parts of a terrain they’ve yet to chart? Yet one day, during Quidditch practise, Draco, sitting on the sidelines, lets out a whoop and a catcall when Harry lets the Snitch slip through his fingertips; and Harry, whipping around towards the sound, is struck through with hungry relief, as if Draco is a familiar landmark he has long forgotten he has known about until he finds himself lost.

It is a bright fall afternoon, and Quidditch practise has been sucking anyway, so Harry doesn’t give a damn as he circles his broom over to the risers and dismounts in front of Malfoy. Malfoy stands immediately, the look of disdain smeared over his face clearly calculated to hide the fact that his eyes are bright and alert with interest. Harry’s heart thumps around in his chest because of the exercise, and he knows that sweat is pooling beneath his jaw and plastering his shirt to his skin. By contrast Draco is smooth and composed, every hair in place, still with that laidback, open stance. For one blinding moment of lust all Harry can see when he looks into that perfect pointed face is the body to be claimed, the carte blanche upon which he must etch his message, so sharply the scar never fades: Harry Potter was here.

Lust seeps into every nerve ending in his body. That’s what matters, not the words that are falling automatically out of his mouth, whatever they are. He wants him so badly that it takes him a few moments of blind shock for his brain to catch up with his hormones and realise that Malfoy’s tongue is against his lips because Malfoy has put it there; that the hairs on the back of his neck are tingling because Malfoy’s fingertips are curving around and tracing the skin there. He is completely unresponsive until he feels his own fingertips moving futilely against the inside pad of his leather wrist guards, and understands that they are still dangling loosely by his sides. Blood rushes to his head and pools in his groin, and he presses closer just as Draco breaks away. Harry’s eyes fly open, and he gasps before he can help himself.

The bastard still has his hand [in his pocket](http://www.rosiesamfrodo.com/~rave/art/hdkiss.jpg).

The absurdity of the fact that Draco Malfoy has just casually kissed him on the Quidditch pitch with utterly no forewarning escapes Harry completely. His lips are tingling with the memory of the contact, and all he can think is that he has just been marked. Claimed. And—and no. He is Harry Potter, and this is not how he works.

At any other time he might think that for Draco this is just another blow in an ongoing battle—just one more way of getting to him. But he has what he wants in front of him, and that is all he needs to know. With the assurance born of years of habit, Harry steps close, and takes it.

Malfoy is not expecting this, but he leans against Harry readily, and parts his lips just a little against the onslaught of Harry’s mouth. The experience of being the one doing the kissing is intoxicating, and if Harry’s tongue could do the same things as Umbridge’s quill, then he would not stop until Draco Malfoy was red and raw and bleeding from every pore.

When he finally pulls away, Draco is calm and unruffled; but finally he has taken his hand out of his pocket. The angles of his jaw line and cheekbones and his sharp pointed nose are much more appealing up close, Harry thinks. Draco Malfoy is a whole topography waiting to be mapped, and there is suddenly no question in Harry’s mind that he will.

He expects there to be more opposition. When he flies back to the pitch to resume play, he expects someone to question, or stop him. Ron gazes at him darkly, but says nothing, and the others look at him from lowered lids, and that night at dinner when the gossip flits all about him, no one says a word to him; not even Hermione, who only sits primly beside him as if she fully expects Harry to contradict the rumours in a moment anyway, so there’s no need for her to say what she thinks. He counters this by gazing steadily in the direction of Draco Malfoy, who gazes steadily back at him, all night long. Draco’s reaction has been most telling of all: he has been silent, pursing his lips and watching. Harry realises he has been doing the exact same thing, but he is not Draco Malfoy. He would have expected Malfoy to disappear, or tell everyone grandly at dinner how Harry Potter tried to molest him. There is none of that, and as Harry sits and doesn’t eat, he wonders if Draco has finally learned that fighting him is doomed to end in failure.

By no one’s agreement they find one another that night and fuck. It’s as simple as the Marauder’s Map and a tap on the shoulder. Draco’s touches are frantic and unsteady, his voice harsh and guttural when he tells Crabbe and Goyle to get out. Harry doesn’t think about why Draco Malfoy’s voice giving orders is a turn-on . This isn’t about pleasure, anyway. At least not that kind of pleasure. This is the kind of pleasure that creates a burning need inside you and then fills it, night after night; it is not the kind of pleasure that fills the gaping need that is already there.

Harry knows this, and though they don’t talk about it, or talk at all, he knows Draco understands it too. And that’s fine with him, because of all the things he needs right now, someone wanting him to stop gaps in their life and vice versa is not one of them.

All his life, Harry Potter has wanted love, but now what he wants is for Malfoy to tear him apart, and for Malfoy to let Harry rip him open. He wants Malfoy the way he wants to watch a needle enter his skin, the way he wants to rip off a hangnail until it bleeds.

Malfoy is his to use, and Malfoy has always been his to discard: Harry makes that clear on the first night, when he takes Malfoy hard, up against the wall of the Slytherin dormitory, and doesn’t let Draco come until he’s come twice himself. He knows next to nothing about sex, but he’s an expert on how to piss Draco Malfoy off: the same taunts he flings on the Quidditch pitch prove even more effective in bed. Sometimes he binds Draco and then pours insults into his ears for hours, until Draco’s body is arching helplessly upwards with every single jeer, every single insult to his name, to the Malfoy family honour, to his pure blood. Sometimes Draco comes screaming obscenities, his eyes laced with venom and resentment and lust, and he kisses Harry in-between murmured chants of all the ways he wants to kill him. Sometimes he lies very still, and trembles a little beneath Harry, as if he knows he’s owned, and that there’s nothing he can do about it. These are the moments Harry takes the most pleasure in, because something shutters behind Draco’s pale expression, and locks into place, and Harry sees this as his triumph. His ultimate victory.

Outwardly, if Malfoy is whipped he never shows it, not even when Harry’s hand is on his crotch and there are a roomful of people trying not to notice. Sometimes Harry deliberately does things to him where people can see, just to watch Draco’s reaction, or lack thereof. Malfoy never shows what he feels around Harry anyway, but sometimes he will let out a moan that people the next room over had to have heard, and to Harry that makes all the hate he feels worth it.

He wonders, but never asks, how Malfoy can just put up with the things Harry does to him, and, more than put up, seem to invite it with his steady gaze and his sometimes deferentially lowered chin, as if all he wants is to be writhing under Harry with teeth marks in his shoulder. Harry wonders, but never asks, how Malfoy can be so content with being beneath Harry, a thousand ways beneath him but never on top—and, even more, how he can continue to try so hard to align himself with Harry’s hips, or to engulf even more of him inside the constraints of that thin jaw line. Harry wonders, but never asks, which of them hates Draco more—Harry, or Draco himself.

The first indication comes a month or so after they’ve started fucking. Harry is so open about it that the house elves don’t even bother changing the sheets on Harry’s bed at Gryffindor Tower, because he is never there to sleep in it. Harry frequently wonders where Crabbe and Goyle are sleeping, but always forgets to ask Draco where he stashed them. Dumbledore stops him one day to eye him sagely and drop cryptic advice in his ear, but at the first mention of Draco Harry walks away, and no one approaches him from then on.

Shortly afterwards Harry notices Draco reading, no, scouring the daily papers, a look of concentration on his face. Harry asks him what he’s hunting for, and is genuinely shocked when Draco responds absently that he is looking for news of Voldemort. Harry demands to know what he’s on about, only to receive a scowl and a hastily folded up Prophet tossed at him in response. Just for that Harry fucks him until he’s sore.

Then Draco turns up in the Room of Requirement for the weekly training session of Dumbledore’s Army. At first Harry is determined to kick him out, but Draco changes his mind by hexing him in swift succession with three curses Harry’s never heard of, then explaining to the rest of the fascinated group how they work while Harry nurses his wounds. Later on Harry fucks him, and Draco laughs at his bruises and mutters something about getting him back for the train. Harry feels a cold chill run through him. Afterwards Draco lifts Harry’s hand and kisses the letters on the back of it. This time the chill doesn’t go away.

Malfoy’s never given him chills before, and it turns out they aren’t the easiest thing to be rid of. There is a swift lurching in his stomach now when he thinks of Draco, the same kind of plummeting despair he gets when he thinks of Sirius. Harry doesn’t know what that means or what to do about it, so he yells at everyone and tries not to spend too much time looking at Draco when they fuck.

He hates Draco Malfoy. Sometimes he thinks he may even hate him more than Snape now. Maybe even more than Sirius.

He sleeps in his own bed for three nights, getting angrier and angrier, and by the third night he thinks maybe he’s figured out why Draco is so fucking content to be his whipping post. By the third night his fingernails are itching to dig into flesh and scrabble over Draco’s thighs, and he thinks that maybe Draco has decided that a Harry Potter who fucks him senseless every night is easier to get around than a Harry Potter who ignores everything he does.

Harry decides to remind Draco just who is screwing who, and then Snape dies.

Harry hears of Snape’s death and gloats loudly, before learning how he died. He supposes that there’s really only one way for someone like Snape, who betrayed whatever cause he felt like joining, to die. Snape has most satisfactorily complied with his view of things, by dying of poison administered to him by Lucius Malfoy, pledges of support for Voldemort still clinging to his lips. It is simple and just, thinks Harry, and he is smugly, savagely happy about it.

When he does not see Draco at dinner or breakfast the next day, he is not terribly concerned; truth be told, he is too happy, too busy being smug with Ron and the other Gryffindors, to care much about Draco one way or the other.

It hits him with a sharp pang of need on the second morning after Snape, when he wakes missing the warmth of a body beside him in bed, that Draco is not there. Even then he puts this easily out of his mind. It’s understandable, too, that Draco is not in Potions class that afternoon, even though by now they have had so many substitute teachers they ought to be prepared for anything.

They are given back the results of their latest test, the last thing Snape ever graded. There is a grim silence as the students accept Snape’s accusing black scrawl. When the substitute reaches Draco’s name, she pauses and looks up at the room. Instantly, Harry feels the collective gaze of Slytherin turning towards him expectantly. Wondering what they think he’s supposed to do about it anyway, Harry ducks his head and scowls at the desk. When the teacher calls Draco Malfoy’s name again, Pansy Parkinson loudly offers to take his test and homework to him, and Harry feels her glare heating up the back of his neck.

Later, when Ron says that he guesses Harry and Malfoy broke up, things start to make a bit more sense. Rather than spluttering out an explanation of exactly why he and Malfoy never could have broken up because there has never been anything to break, Harry leaves. His nerves are tingling with pent-up energy, his body pangs for Malfoy’s at unexpected moments, and it’s been far too long since he’s had a shag.

Harry does not knock when he opens Draco’s door.

Draco is sitting on his bed ripping his test into shreds. His clothes all look as if they have been worn too long, and his normally perfect hair has not been brushed in days. Around the room fragments of glass and porcelain, papier-mâché and glittering gemstones litter the floor; Harry knows Draco likes to own things that break, but he has never seen him break any of them.

In front of Draco, on the bed, is his wand. When Harry steps through the door Draco looks up at him and slowly picks it up, pointing it. He looks up at Harry evenly. It takes Harry a moment to realise that it is being pointed at him.

For one fleeting moment, he thinks that it’s only Malfoy, that he can’t mean it. Then Malfoy, Only Malfoy, tells him where he can go, and his grip on the wand tightens.

In that instant, though it is the stupidest of all possible moments for it to happen, Harry feels the gaping hole inside him rupture and burst apart five times wider. He stares at Draco, whose wand-hand trembles even as his grip stays firm, and thinks about his hand in his pocket, about Draco scanning the newspaper and showing up to DA meetings and Draco letting Harry inscribe himself on him night after night. He thinks about Draco’s voice the day he confronted Harry after Lucius went to Azkaban, and about Draco’s voice when he comes.

Draco’s eyes are wide and hostile, and Harry is very aware that if he takes a step further he will be hexed. The moment Harry realises that he is going to move towards Draco anyway, the space between them suddenly seems to swallow him up. He thinks he could cross the room forever and still never reach Draco, and this makes him think of Sirius, and of all the times Draco has awakened him from dreams of falling through a veil after him, into an eternal blackness.

Harry does not really understand shame until now. Before he has always been able to blame his shame on other people, and there has always been someone around him to shield him from it himself. Now there is no one. It hits him from all sides, and the only thing that keeps him from collapsing under it is the fact that across the room, sitting on the bed looking up at him, is Draco Malfoy, who needs him.

The air thickens around him as he steps forward. He isn’t sure what he is supposed to do beyond this point, but he reaches out a hand and puts it over Draco’s to take the wand from him. Draco tenses, but lets him, and Harry keeps his hand there, stroking Draco’s fingers lightly as he puts the wand on the bedstead and sits down on the bed beside him.

His fingers over the back of Draco’s hand are the only contact between them. Draco’s skin is very cold, not like normal. He peers into his face. Draco’s cheeks are tear-streaked, but the sculpted look of his upper lip is still firmly in place. Impulsively Harry lifts a finger to trace the curve of it. Draco’s eyes flit in surprise as Harry traces his lip, but he makes no other reaction.

Harry feels as if everything in his life has been put on hold just for this moment. The things he has put off thinking about Draco are all swirling around inside of him, churning his stomach all to pieces and sending butterflies through his nerves, alighting wherever his fingertips meet Draco’s skin. Draco sits perfectly still, and everything around them is silent, which is just how Harry wants it. The moments before this one flicker over him and make him nauseous—all of the times when he taunted Draco, coaxed him to make as much noise as possible, to make him scream and perform like a trained seal.

His fingers tear against the bedspread, and he thinks of all the times he tore at Draco’s skin the same way, as if by ripping Draco apart he could rip out the thing inside him, the thing that let Sirius die and laughs at Snape’s death and uses Malfoy like a puppet and fucks and Crucios and kills.

His forefinger still traces the edge of Draco’s soft mouth, and watches the attentive way Draco’s eyes study each of his movements. He can’t bear being Harry Potter for another single instant.

And then Draco closes his eyes, slowly, as if he can’t help himself. As if he is not being touched by a monster. As if he is not being touched by Harry at all.

Harry thinks that if he touches Draco, Draco will save him. He wonders why he didn’t think of it before. And then, like light from one newly opened chamber of his heart flooding the doorway into another, he understands that what he really wants has nothing to do with saving himself.

He sees himself cupping the side of Draco’s face, running his thumb over Draco’s jaw line. Draco leans into it instinctively, a drawn-out breath escaping him, soft as pearl. Harry thinks of another self who wanted simultaneously to fuck Malfoy’s brains out and dash them on the pavement. That self never saw Draco’s hair this untidy; that self never imagined that touching Draco Malfoy could make his heart speed up. That self wouldn’t have wished Snape alive again just because he didn’t know any other way to take the lost look off Draco’s face.

Harry wraps his other hand around Draco’s wrist, and thinks that if Sirius were alive he would tell him that this way is the wrong way, that this isn’t how you treat the Malfoys. Then Harry thinks about the missing spaces on the Black family tree, and he thinks that for every name blotted out, there’s a new name inscribed on someone else’s heart.

He needs only to lean across the space between them, see the flicker of light that enters Draco’s eyes, and feel the responsive somersault in his chest, to understand what he wants.

He does something he has never done before, and kisses each of Draco’s eyelids. They flutter like caged birds beneath his lips, and Harry feels Draco’s fingers move over his forearm and tighten reflexively around it. It feels like being held all over.

He shivers and slides his other hand around to the back of Draco’s neck. Draco’s hair gathers in his hand, tangled and softer than it usually is when he touches it. Harry hesitates a moment and thinks about the nausea he felt when Cho Chang first kissed him. He wonders if Draco felt that the first time he kissed Harry, and if any of this would have happened if it had been up to Harry to kiss first. Draco is watching him without a word. Harry closes his eyes, whispers something in Draco’s ear, and places his lips beneath it, right on the juncture where his smooth soft skin meets his hair. Draco sighs, and moves his hand up Harry’s forearm, slowly, shifting just a little closer. Harry wants to tell him not to be such a fucking prude, but then realises that he has never really given Draco full reign over his body; not the way Draco has allowed Harry free access to his.

He pulls back a little and studies Draco, whose pale face looks even paler where tear tracks have streaked it wet. He wants to say something about Snape, but knows that is not his right; he wants to ask how Draco does it, how he goes through every day without losing himself under his own anger and grief, and then thinks maybe that is not his right either. He thinks of his own efforts to turn Draco into a cipher underneath him every night, and wonders how Draco can stand to touch him. Maybe Draco doesn’t care who it is, as long as he can touch someone. Harry looks at him, at his tight lips, guarded expression, and watchful eyes, and knows he’s seeing a reflection of himself. And Harry doesn’t think he wants Draco to want just anyone.

He stretches out his arms, and Draco moves into them without a second thought. He murmurs a curse against Harry’s mouth, and then kisses him deeply. Harry captures Draco’s chin in his palm and drags him closer, while his other hand slides beneath Draco’s shirt. Draco, who never goes anywhere without his shirt tucked in, is rumpled and dishevelled. Harry feels an impulse to tell him how sexy he looks, but his instinct tells him Draco wouldn’t know sexy from the underside of a toadstool right now. He stays quiet instead and kisses back hungrily.

Draco’s hands touch him, but only touch, never move, and only when Harry starts to unbutton his collar does Draco fumble to reciprocate. His movements are unfocused and unsteady, and Harry can see that Draco is dazed and probably exhausted. He resists the urge to push Draco’s hands away and undress both of them faster. He wants Draco to touch him; more importantly, he wants Draco to want to touch him. Slowly Draco begins to move his hands over Harry, mapping out his chest, his shoulders, his back. Need and lust fizz through Harry, and he buries his head in Draco’s shoulder, sucking and biting away the taste of leftover tears on the porcelain skin.

When they are both unclothed, Draco tangles his hands in Harry’s hair and looks at him, almost obediently, waiting for the order, for Harry to tell him what he wants next. Harry has to lean in and kiss Draco, hard and long, to keep from barking out instructions out of pure habit. Draco sighs into Harry’s mouth, and heat stirs his groin as he wraps his arms around Draco and pulls him down beside him onto the bed sheets.

Draco slides his hand over Harry’s stomach, but stops uncertainly when Harry shivers in pleasure. Harry twinges in impatience, and his stomach sinks like dead weight in his ribcage. He’s not any good at this, and he doesn’t know what to do, how to tell stupid Draco Malfoy that it’s okay to touch him.

But then, maybe it isn’t okay. He slides his lips over Draco’s shoulder and kisses down his chest, trying to be reassuring. Maybe trying to have sex like this, with feelings and without rules, is the worst thing of all, because it means something, and where there is meaning, ultimately there is loss. But now, now there is Draco with his lips parted and his breath coming in shallow gasps, stirring Harry’s hair. And Harry thinks that maybe if he can just get Draco to touch him, the rest can work itself out somehow.

His lips brush over Draco’s nipple, teasing it, and Draco draws in a sharp, hitching breath. Harry hoists his leg over Draco’s waist and slides on top of him, pressing their hips together tightly.

Draco feels like heated silk under his body, and he arches up into Harry responsively, gasping at the sudden new closeness. His cock sways near Harry’s navel, and Harry strokes it slowly with his thumb and forefinger, before sliding down and grinding his own erection against it. Draco’s entire body contorts, and he squeezes his legs around Harry’s thighs tightly, trying to drag him still closer. His skin is sticky and moist and warm, and it feels so good that for a moment Harry almost thinks he is happy. Draco’s first name escapes his lips, and he tilts Draco’s head up to kiss the underside of his chin.

Draco has his eyes closed, and Harry has no way to tell what he is feeling behind that locked expression. He tries to imagine how he would have felt having sex three days after Sir—but that thought is so raw and dangerous he has to immediately slam it shut again.

He grinds down harder, more demandingly, nicking Draco’s jaw line with his teeth. Draco is firm and hard beneath him, his cock wet from his own sweat and precome, but he lets out no more than the tiniest gasp when Harry speeds up. His eyes scrunch tighter, as if he’s afraid to feel too much in front of Harry, afraid to give anything away. Harry thinks he’s doing it all wrong, and he doesn’t know how to give Draco anything back after all he has taken from him. He shifts miserably in between Draco’s thighs, trying to ignore his own pleasure, which guts him with every thrust. It would be so easy to take control, to turn Draco over and fuck him raw. Maybe it would even be better—maybe Draco wants to be fucked raw. Maybe Draco needs it. Harry thinks maybe he could understand wanting to be de-humanized that way, when being human is so much pain.

He stops his erratic thrusting and looks up at Draco. If Draco wanted it, he would do it, he realises. Harry has used Draco to self-destruct night after night. Now it is Draco’s turn; if he wants it, Harry will take him there. His cock is pulsing and hard, and if he doesn’t grind it back into Draco’s own very soon Harry thinks he’ll go mad, but he forces himself to keep still, and watch Draco.

Draco never opens his eyes. In a hoarse, ragged voice, he tells Harry not to stop, and then he lets his name, Harry’s name, slip from him like an amen.

Then he arches his long, beautiful neck, and offers his throat to Harry.

Harry takes it, hungry for it, pushing himself up on his palms and shoving his hips into Draco’s as he runs his tongue over the expanse of delicate skin from Draco’s chin to his collarbone. Draco is his, belongs to him, he is his and Harry has to take and mark what is his. He cannot have enough, not of Draco, not of this, not when it is being offered to him so prettily. He moans and suckles the flesh above Draco’s collarbone, and presses himself so hard into Draco’s erection that every inch of them press together from tip to base, Draco’s cock tight and ready and hot under his own.

Draco cries out and [grips Harry’s arm](http://www.dombillijah.com/users/rave/art/hdf.jpg) below his shoulder, digging his nails into Harry’s skin—and that is new, that heightens the tension between Harry’s legs to a whole new level of pleasure he didn’t think he could get out of this kind of position—and right before he loses control of his thoughts he wonders if maybe all kinds of sex with Draco will be this much better after this. He shifts his weight downward and kisses Draco’s neck compulsively, and lets the shuddering body beneath him carry him forward, thrusting and jerking in a mutual rhythm of grunts and pants. Draco comes first, his eyes springing wide open to look at Harry. The suddenness of those eyes on him right at that moment shocks Harry into his own orgasm. White heat spreads everywhere inside him, pooling not just in his groin but in his heart, in his mind, in his head. Harry didn’t know you could come in all those places at once.

He dips to kiss Draco’s come-spattered chest, running his tongue over his jerking navel. Draco’s muscles twitch, and his fingers open and close into fists over Harry’s skin as he calms down. His skin tastes like salt and sweat, and like Harry. In the morning, Harry decides, he will give Draco a blowjob in the shower. They’ve never done that before. In fact, he realises, he’s never touched Draco that way at all before.

He crawls back up to Draco’s arms, wanting to ask him—but Draco is already asleep. His eyes are shut tight with exhaustion, and it suddenly occurs to Harry that this is maybe the first time that he’s slept in days. There’ll be no waking him for a midnight shag later on.

Harry runs his palm down over Draco’s smooth stomach, and then kisses his forehead. He is tired, too, and even though there is a great lightness inside him, a kind of spent, exhaustive pleasure, the dark unutterable shame is still there too: shame for who he is, for what he’s done, for what he’s failed to do. Part of him wishes Draco would wake up so he could kiss him again, because that would be less like shame and more like hope, maybe. But mostly he’s content to let him sleep.

He rolls off Draco, who sighs and shifts toward him until he is using Harry’s left arm for a pillow. Harry wonders if he could ever hope to make someone else happy, or if he is doomed to take all his happiness at the expense of other people. He thinks that maybe he wants to make Draco happy, and that maybe that’s a start; then he thinks that maybe there’s only one kind of person he’s even capable of making happy, and that’s the kind that gets their names blotted off family trees.

Maybe tomorrow, he thinks, he will wake Draco up with a long slow fuck. They’ve never come in the morning. He thinks it might be nice.

It’s only when he rolls over to run his hand lightly over Draco’s back that he sees it—a light indentation where Draco’s fingernails have left four half-moon marks on his upper arm.

Harry reaches for his wand, and carefully, so as not to wake Draco, scars them into his skin.

 

~~~

**EPILOGUE**

_Harry thinks about the missing spaces on the Black family tree, and he thinks that for every name blotted out, there’s a new name inscribed on someone else’s heart._

 

There is to be a memorial service.  Harry is furious when he hears of it.  It is not as if Snape ever did anything that was worth commemorating; he was a bad teacher, a horrible human being, and, so it would seem, a horrible spy.

Hermione tells him, then asks faintly if Harry is going to go.

Harry, wondering why Draco has not mentioned any memorial, retorts that he doesn’t see why he should care, to which Hermione replies in a querulous voice that she just thought, perhaps, because of Harry and—she stops here, as if she has reached a point of thought so foreign to her that her brain has shut down completely rather than accept the idea.  Harry tries to grapple with the fact that he is expected to honor Snape because he and Draco are— and his own brain almost follows suit.

In bed that night, Draco arches up and up, begging to be touched from his throat to his ribcage to the backs of his knees.  Harry knows distantly there is something behind this, but he is focused on canvassing the smooth terrain from Draco’s navel to his thigh, on lapping up the drops of sweat that have formed and clung to the hair at his groin.  Harry buries his face there, in the scent and the damp, and just when he is almost immersed, Draco says his name.

Draco says his name, and Harry raises up and pushes up the length of Draco’s long waist; he fits their torsos together like matching jigsaw pieces and locks his hips against Draco’s.

He wonders briefly what has happened to him, because lately he always needs to look Draco in the eye before they kiss.  He thinks they will kiss now, but instead Draco watches, just watches, and Harry hears himself saying in a rush, though they have not talked about it at all:

‘Am I supposed to go tomorrow with you?’

Draco’s eyes widen, and unknowingly he moves his hand down Harry’s right arm, over the faint scar from his fingernails.  He stops when he touches the fading scar left from Umbridge’s quill, and his fingers move over it without his needing to look for the shape.  Harry knows that when Draco inevitably discovers the existence of that first, hidden scar, he will try to claim it for himself, without knowing that he already has.

He looks as if he wants to answer, but does not know what answer to make, and Harry can’t blame him.  His cock is pressing against Draco’s and he can’t help closing in for more pressure, but Snape is dead, and Sirius is dead, and Draco’s family killed them, and he can’t _fuck_ right until Draco does something about it.

‘He didn’t get one,’ says Draco, his eyes flickering as if the awareness is sudden.

‘Who.’  Harry presses down again, urgently, wanting to move, wanting to get inside and stay there until the entire thing is over.

‘Black.’  Draco’s voice has gone lower and quiet, and he is returning the pressure without haste. 

He doesn’t say any more, but Harry suddenly doesn’t want him to.  His throat is dry, and he gives Draco silent permission to move up and kiss him until he forgets all the things he wasn’t going to say.

The service is brief and bleak.  When the eulogy is over, Harry murmurs a requiescat for two instead of one, and tries to feel warm when Draco takes his hand.

 

 

The opening quote is from Sunday in the Park with George, libretto by James Lapine.

 

 


End file.
